by Thien Dinh ’26

Throughout the past decade, Overkill Software has become stale in the game development scene, and the company’s current games are pretty dry. Their publisher, Starbreeze Nebula, also has been in a game drought. Thankfully, Payday 3 is a breath of fresh air into the Payday series.
Other than working a nine-to-five, dancing in clubs, and being beaten by police, one can become a revered international criminal. After the melancholy ending to the Payday gang’s crime spree in Payday 2, they are back with a vengeance. In Payday 3, a cooperative first person shooter, the crew has to pull off heists in the streets of New York.

The game has gone over a few different reworks as most in-game mechanics have changed. All of them are exciting now, and an example is Payday 3’s interaction system. In previous games, lockpicking took up to fifteen seconds. Nothing is really exciting about a timer going down. Payday 3 fixes that tedium with more interactivity and speed. Gameplay wise, playing stealthily is more fun since time isn’t wasted waiting for something to happen, and you are given greater assistance because there are new skill sets for committing burglaries.

On the other hand, hostile takeovers force cooperation and are more enthralling. Previous heists in the series were either too strenuous or effortless. There is a cycle of constantly demolishing enemies or losing to them. To balance this, the game requires unity amongst players, and enemies are more challenging, but fun to play against.

Despite Overkill’s efforts, Payday 3 still has some problems. Occasionally, the game would stutter while playing. The poor optimization foreshadowed the terrible start up on release. If this continues it could negatively affect people with lower-end computers. Before, Payday 2 required average computer requirements to play, but Payday 3 emphasizes an upgrade on your hardware and with this, it puts that demographic on the fence. Another drawback when heisting is it can take twenty or thirty minutes to take everything but you only receive minimal rewards in cash and experience for progressing your skills. The repetitive nature can be annoying but if you focus on having fun, you don’t need to worry.

All things considered, Payday 3 is great but it’s priced four times higher than Payday 2. This is because Starbreeze Nebula wants to create a stronger relationship with their patrons and reduce the price to hook in future customers. This doesn’t appear to be profitable, but Payday 2’s paid downloadable content could work for monetizing Payday 3, even though it is disliked by the community. Overall, even though Payday 3 is a janky robbery game and feels weird, it is still worth your money, because it has more entertainment value than traditional games in this genre.

Grade: B